Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
