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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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