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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm

In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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