Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
