Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the institution's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into other worlds. One such portal seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
