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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the world's sky: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the