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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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