Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
