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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world

In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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