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Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying 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 theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the church's control. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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