Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
