Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
