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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, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book begins with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is established.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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