Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
