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Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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