Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
