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Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe

In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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