Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
