Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
