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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The book opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's air: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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