Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted 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, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
