Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
