Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
