Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a series of strange openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
