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Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The book begins with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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