Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
