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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story begins with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the