Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
