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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The story begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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