Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the church's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
