Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with 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 accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
