Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
