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Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm

In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The story opens with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the