Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
