Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
