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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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