Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. One such portal appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
