Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
