Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
