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Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe

In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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