Philip Pullman’s use of language of fantasy to illuminate our world and to explore the deepest question of what it means to be alive and awake to all the splendors and horrors around us. 

In volume one his follow up triology which referenced John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The next volume depict Lyra at 20, battling anti-liberal forces, and the final volume published this week, those forces are confirmed to be multinational conglomerates that overdevelop erstwhile wholesome communities and even threaten to buy naming rights to Oxford colleges. Lyra Silvertongue was new Eve, Her “Fall” into sin reframed as a victory for freedom.

In Rose Field Lyra is picked up exactly where we left her at the end of The Secret Commonwealth (2019) in the desert outside Aleppo, about to enter the haunted ruins of an ancient city, is alone in a city haunted by daemons, searching for her beloved Pan, while Malcolm Polstead is not far behind, searching for Lyra the love triangle. They are both racing toward the desert of Karamakan, following the trail of roses said to hold the secret of Dust.

Their allies and enemies are converging on the mysterious red building at the heart of the desert: Marcel Delamare and the military might of the Magisterium; the radical Men from the Mountains, scientists, scholars, and spies; troops of witches and other people of the air. And waiting them all is a previously unseen and chilling new threat that will change everything.

Malcolm and Lyra’s both internal and external journeys, will test their limits and challenge even their most dearly held beliefs. 

Pullman explains his meaningless metaphysical rules that forced Lyra to part forever from Will at the end of Amber Spyglass. Pullman has an angel to explain to Lyra that they should never have trusted the angel who ordered them to live in separate universes and close all openings between them. The revelations does not however bring back Will, who has by now become irrelevant.

The Rose Field: The Book of Dust, Volume Three by Phillip Pullman, Illustrated by Christopher Wormell, David Fickling Books with Penguin Random House £25/ Knopf $29.99, 640 pages.