Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into other worlds. One such window appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
