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Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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