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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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