Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
