Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
