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Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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