Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
