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Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the