Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant 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 protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
