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Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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