Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy 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 the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
