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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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