Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
