Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
