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Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "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 removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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