Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
