Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
