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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the world's air: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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