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Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the world's air: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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