Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
