Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
