Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
