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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world

In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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