Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting 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 religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
