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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger 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 appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, her actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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