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Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm

In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel begins with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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