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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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