Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
