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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book begins with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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