Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
