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Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the