Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
