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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the universe

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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