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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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