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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book starts with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the