Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
