Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
