Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
