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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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