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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The book starts with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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