Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle independence of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
