Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
