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Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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