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Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm

In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the