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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe

In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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