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Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The book starts with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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