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Things are collapsing 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 charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story starts with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is set.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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