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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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