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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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