Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
