Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
