Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
