Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
