Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike 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 The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that appear to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
