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Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split 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 go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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