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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book starts with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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