Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
