Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
