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Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature academics 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 the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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