Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
