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Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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