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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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