Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
