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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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