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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The story begins with the finding of a series of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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