Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
