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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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