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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is established.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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