Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
