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Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe

In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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