Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
