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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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