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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, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe

In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the