Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
