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Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe 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 hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the church's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is established.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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