Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
