Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl 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 young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
