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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel 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 draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.

Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm

In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The book starts with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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