Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
