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Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm

In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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