Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
