Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
