Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
