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Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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