Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden 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 chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
