Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the world's air: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
