Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
