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Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger 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 deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe

In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story starts with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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