Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
