Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden 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 accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
