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Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The story starts with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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