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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.

As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm

In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the