Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
