Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
