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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is established.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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