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Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book begins with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is set.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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