Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
