Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
