Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
