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Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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