Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
