Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
