Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
