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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, 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 prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe

In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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