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Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe

In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is set.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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