Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, 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 depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that look to open into different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
