Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
