Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to open into alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the