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Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.

As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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