Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
