Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture 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 maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
