Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
