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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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