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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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