Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, 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". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
