Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
