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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The book starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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