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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.

Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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