Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
