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Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first 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 clearly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened 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.

Merging Narratives

His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The book begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: windows that look to open into other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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