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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The story begins with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and return to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is established.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the