Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
