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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the