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Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm

In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the