Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell independence of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
