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Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar 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 draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, 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 pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe

In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book begins with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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