Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma 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 its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
