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Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is set.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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