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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book begins with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular window appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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