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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution'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 spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe

In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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