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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The novel starts with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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