Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
