Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
