Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials 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 young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
