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Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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