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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 world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world

In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the