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Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this 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, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world

In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the