Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
