Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
