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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The story opens with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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