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Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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