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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm

In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the