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Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe

In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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