Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
