Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
