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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe

In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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