Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
