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Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm

In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The book starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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