Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
