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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The story opens with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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