Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
