Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's air: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
