Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
