Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
