Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
