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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The story opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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