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Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible 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 recently acquired power to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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