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Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm

In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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