Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
