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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm

In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, her actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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