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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting 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 shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe

In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The story begins with the finding of a series of strange openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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