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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The story opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is established.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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