Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling 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 flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old 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 young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, 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 authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's air: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
