Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
