Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
