Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
