Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
