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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world

In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is set.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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