Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
