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Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles 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 air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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