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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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