Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
