Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
