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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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