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Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book begins with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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