Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
