Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
