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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The book starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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