Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
