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Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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