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Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the world's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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