Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
