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Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm

In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel begins with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the