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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.

As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is set.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the