Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
