Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the