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Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the