Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
