Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
