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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The book begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is set.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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