Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
