Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
