Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
