Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned 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 mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that appear to open into other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
