Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
