Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
