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Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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