Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
