Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
