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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the