Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to 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 persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
