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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm

In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the