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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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