Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
