Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
