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Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is set.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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