Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
