Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice 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 journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
