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Tings 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, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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