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Things are unraveling in the final volume 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 charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.

Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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