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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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