Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
