Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
