Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified 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
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
