Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
