Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split 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 search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
