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Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm

In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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