Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
