Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
