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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm

In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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