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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The story begins with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is set.

Story Tempo and Character Development

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the