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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.

Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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