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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm

In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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