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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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