Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the