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Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the world

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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