Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
