Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
