Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
