Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a series of strange openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
