Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. One such window seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
