Things are falling apart 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 intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
