Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
