Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
