Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
