Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
