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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story starts with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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