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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer 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 scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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