Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
