Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and back to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
