Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
