Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
