Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
