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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is established.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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