Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
