Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
