Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
