Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
