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Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story opens with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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