Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
