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Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

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

In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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