Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
