Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
