Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
