Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
