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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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