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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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