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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The book begins with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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