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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the