Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography 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 accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
