Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
