Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
