Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
