Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, 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 sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
