Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of reason, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
