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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world

In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The story starts with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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