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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling 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 shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe

In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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