Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
