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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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