Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, 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 go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
