Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
