Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
