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Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original 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 adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – 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 pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.

Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The story opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the