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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to open into other worlds. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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