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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine'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 determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm

In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The story begins with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the