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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm

In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the