Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
