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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The story begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the