🔗 Share this article

Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the