Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
