Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
