Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
