Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
