Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
