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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The book starts with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the