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Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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