Philip Pullman says goodbye to Lyra Belacqua

Thirty years after the beginning of His Dark Materials and nearly a decade after launching his second bestselling trilogy, The Book of Dust, Philip Pullman concludes the Lyra Belacqua saga: the 79-year-old British author has published The Rose Field, his latest fantasy novel in which the young heroine embarks on a new journey through parallel worlds, exploring themes dear to his author: freedom, faith, knowledge, and conscience. Readers had first encountered Lyra in The Golden Compass, coming to know her courage, imagination, and recklessness. Accompanied by the daemon Pan—an animal companion who reflects her soul—even before she reaches adulthood, Lyra helps save the universe in a bold reimagining of John Milton's Paradise Lost, in which the world is saved, rather than condemned, by original sin. Full of adventure and grand ideas, they were followed by The Subtle Knife in 1997 and The Amber Spyglass in 2000, followed by La Belle Sauvage and the Secret Kingdom, the imagery of a dystopian Oxford intact in the five volumes published in Italy by Salani, which have sold 50 million copies worldwide. Now comes the final word: Pullman has returned to Lyra's story, picking up where he left off in the last novel: "She had helped save the universe—but she was still young, barely out of childhood. What was she going to do with the rest of her life? Learn Latin and French and play netball? I don't think so. She needed another adventure," the author told the New York Times. The new book, filled with wonders like the touchy, self-centered griffins who worship gold and demand ceremonious respect, is a manifesto of humanism and intellectual honesty in a world where the real villains are multinationals, corrupt governments, contempt for nature, and a cruel, power-hungry Church. Lyra and Pan have separated, and each, in their own way, is on a journey to rediscover their lost imagination—that "realm of understanding" that embraces "the mysteries of the heart and mind," while the Magisterium consolidates power by imposing its ideology on a frightened populace through misinformation, anti-scientific propaganda, and violence. Reluctant to admit that his novels reflect contemporary events, Pullman writes on two levels: beneath the story, which remains the essential element, a dialogue develops with intellectual and metaphysical themes, enriched by references to other works: fairy tales, poetry, scientific treatises, philosophical texts, quantum physics. If Milton's Paradise Lost was the driving force behind His Dark Materials, Edmund Spenser's 16th-century epic, The Faerie Queene, is its new main source of inspiration. Now working on a memoir, Pullman said he was pleased to have brought Lyra's story to completion: "She has found the answer to the mystery with which she began: What is my imagination? Why has it disappeared? By discovering that imagination is a faculty of seeing, not of fantasizing—a capacity that collects memories, resemblances, metaphors, everything connected with the things we see."