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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm

In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The story opens with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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