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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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