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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe

In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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