Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
