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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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