Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to open into other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
