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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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