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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the