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Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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