Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
