Tings 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 tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
