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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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