Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the