Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
