Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
