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Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world

In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the finding of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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