Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety 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 sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
