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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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