Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
