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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel starts with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and back to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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