Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to 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, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
