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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is established.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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