Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars 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 series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
