Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
