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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The book opens with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the