Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
