Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to open into other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
