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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm

In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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