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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's control. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult 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.

Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the world

In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The story begins with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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