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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the world's air: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the