Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to 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 heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
