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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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