Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
