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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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