Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm 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 accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
