Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
