Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
