🔗 Share this article

Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the