Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
