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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.

As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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