Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
