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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts 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 evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

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

In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The book opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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