Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
