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Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe

In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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