Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
