Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
