Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that look to give on to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
