Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
