Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original 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 sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage 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 Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
