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Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world

In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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