Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
