Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
