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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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