Tings are collapsing in the final volume 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 energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain 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 joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
