Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
