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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world

In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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