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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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