Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, 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 struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
