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Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The story opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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