Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
