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Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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