Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's sky: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
