Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
