Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
