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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling 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 shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The story starts with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. One such window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

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