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Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the