🔗 Share this article

Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

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

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the