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Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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