Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
