Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, 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 introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
