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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – 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 destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's air: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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