Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, 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 this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
