Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
