Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
