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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm

In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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