Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
