Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
