Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
