Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
