Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged 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"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
