Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's air: windows that look to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
