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Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes 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 filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The story opens with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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