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Tings 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, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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