Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
