Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, 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 circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
