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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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