Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the church's rule. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
