Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
