Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
