Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
