Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
