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Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world

In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to open into other worlds. A particular window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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