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Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.

Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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