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Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.

As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story begins with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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