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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new 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 draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", 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 strong are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.

Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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