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Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is established.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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