Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
