Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing 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 authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
