Things 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 seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
