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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the church's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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