Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's control. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
