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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, her actions and her fate 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 central struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book begins with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that look to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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