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Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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