Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
