Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
