Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
