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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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