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Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is set.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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