Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
