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Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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