Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
