Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), 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, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
