Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
