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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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