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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the