Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – 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 search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
