Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
