Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
