Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
