Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
