Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
