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Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.

As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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