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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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