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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel starts with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the