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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.

Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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