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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is set.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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