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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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