Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
