Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
