Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
