Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
