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Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The story begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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