Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
