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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors 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 Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe

In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The book begins with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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