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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm

In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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