Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. One such portal seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
