Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
