Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
