Tings are collapsing in the last installment 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 charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
