Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods 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 toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
