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Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the realm

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The book starts with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that look to lead to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the