Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. One such opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
