Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's air: portals that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the