Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
