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Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world

In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The book starts with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the