Things 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, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
