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Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The story begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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