Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that look to open into other worlds. One such opening seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
