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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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