Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
