Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
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 final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
