Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. 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 societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's air: windows that appear to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
