Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch 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 individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
