Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
