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Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The book opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is set.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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