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Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the world

In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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