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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the