Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
