Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
