Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
