Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
