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Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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