Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
