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Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.

Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The novel starts with the finding of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that look to open into other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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