Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
