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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, 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 leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the world's air: portals that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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