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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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