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Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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