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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world

In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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