Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
