Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
