Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
