Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
