Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
