Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
