Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling 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". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her 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 followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
