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Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book starts with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the