Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
