Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
