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Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm

In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her actions and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the