Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen 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 Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
