Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
