Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
