Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the world's air: windows that appear to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
